This page is dedicated to (waitaminit! I am suddenly tempted to recite the first intellegible sentence from the King Tee song Played Like A Piano... This song is dedicated to all the.... ) all those great masters (men AND women, don't get me wrong) of disguise that have tried their best to keep their identity secret in Indian films since the dawn of time. Well, since the dawn of movies, anyway.

I guess if we want to be perfectionists about it, it all started with Bal Gandharva doing his cross-dressing roles in the early days of Bombay (and hence, Indian, since that was all there was to India at that time as far as anything related to movies was concerned) theater. You always see his picture - on one side the male version, on the other the female version, with one of her (his) hands extended out to ward off any advances (you can almost hear her/him saying, Ayya bai! Issha! Mala tar khoop laaj vatte! Lok kai bolteel?!)  from horny young men.

Cross-dressing is only one small part of the whole disguise industry. The concept of a disguise is one of the very important parts of a formula Hindi (or even regional) movie. It is different from the mask (see this page for an example of face transitions) concept in that in the former, you are just trying to hide your real identity, and in the latter, you are trying to get someone else in trouble for what you have done or are going to do. But I guess you know that already.

Let us salute some masters of disguise. You can see these people everywhere. These are the people that if they wore that particular disguise in real life, they would look no different from their old selves, wouldn't be able to fool a blind horse at fifty feet if they wanted to.

A very common disguise in the sixties and seventies: sunglasses and (optional, unless you are MGR, in which case it was a necessity) a mole. No one would recognize you in that getup, dudes!!! If it works in the movies, it should definitely work in real life!!! MGR would sometimes just wear the mole, and no one in town would know him. He used the same disguise in quite a few movies to different ends - sometimes to outsmart the bad guy, sometimes to find out that the princess is secretly in love with the robber who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, and will only confide this to an old fortuneteller who is just the same robber but with a mole and some white hair that makes you think - somewhere in the same studio, a colonial British high court judge is looking for his missing wig. Talk about Judge Dredd, huh!

Another very common disguise (even in the 80s, and sometimes even employed in the 90s - showing you how common it is): a beard, sunglasses, some white cloth and a pressure cooker gasket ring (I personally tried it at home, I recommend you should, too!), and voila! - or should i say Vallah! - you are an Arab Sheikh, with your own interpreter (who in reality is your friend, usually the comic sidekick - so you can easily visualize people like Rajendranath fitting into these roles). Remember, when trying out this disguise you should have an accent that is sooooooo fake that you look like you are from Koliwada rather than from Kuwait. Either you have a fake accent, or you have a totally new language (hence the interpreter), consisting of carefully picked gibberish (Bon Jovi, Bon Jovi, or Chinchpokli, Chinchpokli being the regular utterances in that tongue). You are ready to convince the baddest of bad guys that you are in town to buy the most expensive building only so that you could break it down and build a garage to park your camels. The smartest of villains fall for that trick, showing how universal it is.
So universal, in fact, it was also recently used in the 2001 Hollywood release, What's The Worst That Could Happen? starring Martin Lawrence as the Sheikh and John Leguiziamo as his interpreter. True, the disguise part was taken more seriously in this case, but I just thought the Sheikh routine was worth a mention. The jokes were the same, I guess.

Some really disgusting disguises: Kemal Saar's as Chaplin Chellappan, his own version of the great master, looking no different from Kemal Saar and very little like Chaplin, in this Tam/Gult movie, Punnagai Mannan (literally Smile Man), Kemal Saar again in Yindian (Hindustaani), some more as soon as I think of any that are as disgusting as Kemal Saar himself.

Some funny disguises: Amitabh in Shahenshah, with the takiya-kalaam (repeated dialogue): Rishte mein to hum tumhare baap lagte hain, naam hai Shahenshah - also including some Darth Vader-esque breathing patterns,

Some good getups: The one that Nasseeruddin Shah had on at the beginning of Jalwa (Beverley Hills Cop ripoff) was pretty good - you really couldn't make out it was him, unless you were watching real close,

Before people start complaining about me being sexist and devoting page after page of movie junk to testosterone only, let me also talk about women in disguise.

Of course, these rules would generally fail when applied to women - rules of disguises, I mean. Take for example, the all-saving moustache/beard combination. Unless we are talking about cross-dressing, obviously
women would find it very difficult to hide their true identity with as much ease as men are able to in the movies. Now, now, that's not a sexist statement, is it?

Yet, we find instances of such opportunities being offered to (I didn't say it, they did!) the fairer sex. What would you do if you couldn't change your facial appearance? Go for the rest of the body, of course. For example, as is done in most cases, you just dress different. Case in point: Hawa Hawaii. This Mr. India song sequence features an ace reporter, played by Sridevi (eeyuuck! who, unfortunately after this film, was actually the number one heroine in Bollywood for a while... I can't believe there was actually a time when she was competing against Madhuri Dixit for the crown - I'd think there would be no contest), infiltrates the bad guys' (Daaga and Teja, played by Sharad Saxena and Ajit Vachchani, and of course their indispensable foreign guest, Bob Christo) hideout dressed as this cabaret dancer, Hawa Hawaii. Actually, its not like she's a really famous reporter and her face is known all around town, yet she decides to wear a dress that apparently makes her look different... this dress was probably painstakingly stitched out of tattered rejected/unclaimed clothes that were found at DhobiGhat in Bombay, and a hat that consists of wax fruits (except for the grapes, they were real, I guess, because she eats some).

Remember what I said somewhere up there about the gibberish? The first few lines of this song are derived from an ancient language that died even before the dinosaurs, has no relation either to Hawaii or to the air, and somehow sounds suspiciously Indian in origin.

Once again, this disguise works!! Obviously! It had to! I mean, you couldn't recognize her in that hat!

Cross-dressing. A concept that has always been used in Indian films for comic relief. Some really horrible examples of cross-dressing: Kemal Saar in the disgusting Mrs. Doubtfire ripoff Chachi 420, Sridevi dressing up (for some totally unknown reason, though the makers of the movie probably thought it would be a double comic relief thingie) as Charlie Chaplin in Mr. India (two disguises in one movie! That's what I call master of disguise!), Dimple Kapadia as a guy at the start of this late 80s movie, Aag Ka Gola (thanks, Subroto!), with the song that goes, ``Jisko banana tha ladki, use ladka bana diya'', ...

Some decent female cross-dressers: can only think of one right now. Madhuri Dixit as a male auto-rickshaw driver in Aanso Bane Angaarey (thanks again to Subroto for the reminder). There were a few others, will add them here as and when I remember.

What about the guys? Some male cross-dressers were funny, inspite of Kemal Saar. Aamir Khan in Baazi, singing one of the two ripoffs of Come September (the other, more famous, version being the Madhuri and Sanjay "Frog" Kapoor song Nazrein Mili from Raja - which also had the song Akhiyaan Milaaon, with beats ripped off of Ace of Base's The Sign), Dole Dole, Rishi Kapoor in Rafuchakkar, Biswajeet in Kismat, for this one song that goes ``Kajra mohabbat wala akhiyon mein aisa dala kajre ne le li meri jaan...'', .....